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1,721,142 research outputs found

Characterising the late prehistoric, 'Romano-British' and medieval landscape, and dating the emergence of a regionally distinct agricultural system in South West Britain

Author: Rippon Stephen J.
Brown A.G
Fyfe Ralph M.
Fyfe Ralph
Brown Anthony G.
Rippon Stephen
Publication venue
Publication date: 2004
Field of study

Palaeoenvironmental evidence for the character of lowland cultural landscapes during the last 2500 years in Britain is poorly understood, owing to a combination of an over-reliance on data from upland sequences, and because lowland mires are typically located in positions marginal to areas of settlement and agriculture. This paper presents an attempt to derive environmental evidence for this time period from a lowland context in order to characterise the key periods of change and continuity in the lowlands. The study focuses on mid-Devon, in South West Britain, and uses small pollen sites which are embedded within the historic landscape. The South West is a particularly poor region for lowland environmental data, and has until now been reliant on upland sequences.The results show that continuity, rather than abrupt change, has characterised the landscape from the later Iron Age to the early medieval period (around cal AD 800). There is no palynologically distinct Roman period in the data, contrary to evidence from the high uplands of Exmoor that suggests a decline of the agricultural system during the immediate post-Roman period. Around cal AD800 there is a change in the agricultural system from predominantly pastoral activities to one that led to relatively high proportions of cereal pollen appearing in the sequences, which is interpreted here as marking the onset of convertible husbandry, a regionally distinct agricultural system which is recorded from AD 1350, but whose origins are not documented. This agricultural system remained in place until the post-medieval period, when the predominant agricultural regime returned to pastoralism around AD1750. The data clearly show discrepancies between the high uplands and the lowlands, demonstrating the potential hazards of extrapolating upland sequences to lowlands environments

Southampton (e-Prints Soton)

Crossref

Simulating the nature of vegetation communities at the opening of the Neolithic on Achill Island, Co. Mayo, Ireland — the potential role of models of pollen dispersal and deposition

Author: Thompson Gareth
Fyfe Ralph
Langdon Catherine
Caseldine Chris
Publication venue
Publication date: 2007
Field of study

The landscapes of the extreme western fringe of the European seaboard provide significant challenges to the reconstruction of prehistoric landscapes. The landscapes that exist today often bear little resemblance to those that existed in the middle Holocene owing to a combination of climatic and human influences on the landscape, and there are few surviving landscapes which offer an analogous vegetation situation. The coast of Co. Mayo in Ireland provides perhaps one of the biggest challenges in this regard, being now virtually treeless and covered with extensive tracts of ombrotrophic peat. Palaeoecological data sets indicate extensive woodland in the past in these areas, and the archaeological record shows that the region supported Neolithic populations practising early forms of agriculture. Landscape reconstruction using models that relate pollen dispersal to vegetation communities offers a potential stochastic insight into the nature of former landscapes. The results presented here from a modelling approach to reconstructing earlier prehistoric landscapes clearly demonstrate likely spatial vegetation patterning which could produce pollen assemblages comparable to those in the sub-fossil record. Areas such as Achill Island would have had extensive woodland cover dominated by taxa such as pine, oak and elm, a landscape substantially different from that which exists today. It is argued that at the onset of clearance during the Neolithic the area would have been significantly more attractive to agriculture than it is today

Southampton (e-Prints Soton)

Testing the effect of relative pollen productivity on the REVEALS model: a validated reconstruction of Europe-wide Holocene vegetation

Author: Serge M.A.
Fyfe Ralph
Grant Michael
Mazier Florence
et al.
Publication venue
Publication date: 29/04/2023
Field of study

Reliable quantitative vegetation reconstructions for Europe during the Holocene are crucial to improving our understanding of landscape dynamics, making it possible to assess the past effects of environmental variables and land-use change on ecosystems and biodiversity, and mitigating their effects in the future. We present here the most spatially extensive and temporally continuous pollen-based reconstructions of plant cover in Europe (at a spatial resolution of 1° × 1°) over the Holocene (last 11.7 ka BP) using the ‘Regional Estimates of VEgetation Abundance from Large Sites’ (REVEALS) model. This study has three main aims. First, to present the most accurate and reliable generation of REVEALS reconstructions across Europe so far. This has been achieved by including a larger number of pollen records compared to former analyses, in particular from the Mediterranean area. Second, to discuss methodological issues in the quantification of past land cover by using alternative datasets of relative pollen productivities (RPPs), one of the key input parameters of REVEALS, to test model sensitivity. Finally, to validate our reconstructions with the global forest change dataset. The results suggest that the RPPs.st1 (31 taxa) dataset is best suited to producing regional vegetation cover estimates for Europe. These reconstructions offer a long-term perspective providing unique possibilities to explore spatial-temporal changes in past land cover and biodiversity

Southampton (e-Prints Soton)

Bronze Age upland settlement decline in southwest England: testing the climate change hypothesis

Author: Langdon Peter G.
Fyfe Ralph M.
Charman Dan J.
Amesbury Matthew J.
West Steve
Publication venue
Publication date: 2008
Field of study

The division of land on Dartmoor during the Bronze Age by the construction of moor-wide boundaries known as reaves represents a significant development in agricultural practice and land tenure. Previous research relating to the Dartmoor reaves suggests this way of life may have continued for no longer than 200-400 years. It has been suggested that their abandonment occurred as the result of a deteriorating climate, although there are no published palaeoclimatic reconstructions from the area. We therefore test the hypothesis that on Dartmoor, a marked climatic deterioration occurred in the late Bronze Age that can be linked to the abandonment of the reaves. A palaeoclimatic reconstruction derived from testate amoebae and peat humification analyses is presented from Tor Royal Bog, central Dartmoor, the first such record from southwest England. A major shift to a cooler and/or wetter climate is inferred from ca. 1395-1155 cal BC that is coincident with the period hypothesised as encompassing the abandonment. This climatic deterioration is replicated in sites in northern Britain, suggesting it was a widespread event. It is concluded that while the evidence supports a climatically forced retreat, there are a range of other socioeconomic factors that must also be taken into consideration

Southampton (e-Prints Soton)